The Brown Acid Caveat - The Legendary Pink Dots

THE TEAR GARDEN

Release date and tracklist

pre-order June 23, 2017
official July 7, 2017
US CD / 2xLP / MP3 Metropolis Records MET1096 / ? / ?

Strange Land
The Stars On The Sidewalk
Amy’s personality
Calling Time
On With The Show
Sinister Science
Lola’s Rock
Kiss Don’t tell
A Private Parade
The Sound Of Space escaping
Seven Veils
Object

Credits

Artwork – Peter Clarke
Bass [Additional] – Ryan Moore
Bass, Drums, Percussion, Keyboards, Electronics [Devices] – cEvin Key
Design [Assembled] – Simon Paul
Engineer [NL] – Raymond Steeg
Guitar – Martijn De Kleer
Mixed By, Mastered By – Greg Reely
Percussion [Additional] – Dre Robinson
Violin, Viola – Patrick Q.Wright
Vocals [Vox], Keyboards – Edward Ka-Spel
Voice [Small Voice] – Alice (tracks: 8)

Notes

4-panel Digipak case.
Pledgemusic supporters were shipped orders before the release date.
And there was a pledge option for the CD that included a signed sticker by cEvin Key and Edward Ka-Spel.

It’s been nearly 50 years since the first Brown Acid Caveat was issued to a million hippies in a field at the first Woodstock Festival. In these dark, more-knowing times The Tear garden felt it was the perfect moment to mark their 30th Anniversary with a similar warning, especially as their first album back in 1987 bore the declaration, “We Will Pour Our Jars in Reservoirs” on the cover. In fact, we were joking. Despite the madness you may perceive all around you right now, those jars were stashed on the highest shelf of a kitchen cupboard and the key was tossed into the ocean. Our sole wish is to introduce beauty to the medieval landscape we appear to be trapped in right now. There will be no brown paint splashed around. Beauty survives, even underneath the ugliest, heaviest rock. This is The tear Garden’s 8th record and is testimony to an enduring friendship that spans the aforementioned ocean. After 8 years, The Tear Garden (the psychedelic/experimental/electronic project of Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pink Dots & cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy) return with “The Brown Acid Caveat”, the culmination of the duo’s 31 years of working together. Psychedelic electronic melancholia, fearless experimentation & improvisation combine to take the intrepid listener on a mesmerizing voyage of the mind. Feel the Love. Don’t touch the brown acid.

Reviews

How to characterize The Tear Garden, the more than 30 year collaboration between Skinny Puppy’s Cevin Key and The Legendary Pink Dots’ Edward Ka-Spel? The threads that make up their discography aren’t hard to identify; there’s a baleful wit couched in heartbreak and a melancholic psychedelia that are easy to spot on every LP, EP and non-album track with few exceptions. But just being able to identify those repeated moods and ideas doesn’t get us any closer to understanding the essence of what these two friends have together, or how their divergent musical paths keep leading them back together to make such lovely music.

The Brown Acid Caveat is the first LP of new material since 2009′s Have a Nice Trip and in contrast to that record’s jammy experimentalism (a thing both Edward and Cevin excel at unsurprisingly), the songs here feel more purposeful and concise. Even when the songs stretch out past the seven minute mark, their deliberate construction hearkens back to the latter era-Nettwerk Tear Garden albums, when many of LPD’s members were involved in the project. Probably not coincidentally, some former Dots – guitarist Martijn De Kleer and dub maestro Ryan Moore – are present here, although it’s unclear to what extent they pitched in or influenced the proceedings. That said, opener “Strange Land” hearkens back to 2000′s underrated Crystal Mass, playing out as a sad travelogue through places real and imaginary, all carried by delicately strummed guitars and Ka-Spel in the wounded sage persona he’s been growing into since his very earliest recordings.

Indeed, while the group has always thrived on a mix of straight songwriting and trippy outer space journeys, Ka-Spel and Key are working hard to reconcile those ideas here. Functionally that means you get more than a few songs, like “On With the Show” and “Kiss Don’t Tell”, that start fully formed before slowly unravelling into ambient tapestries of modular synthesizer, samples and reverb. And while every song feels as though it could go in that direction, The Tear Garden do show some restraint, allowing the lovely repeating synth figure of “A Private Parade” to play itself out fully before swapping in a solo that lands somewhere between a violin and a theremin. Especially pleasant is the excellent “Calling Time” (which features one of Ka-Spel’s best bits of contemporary wordplay “I’ll serve until it’s time/I’ll serve until this bar runs dry”) which marries a propulsive bassline with off-kilter mechanical percussion and a bubbling lead, all delivered in a relatively trim 4:29.

Still, while this is unmistakably a Tear Garden record, from the dubby half-spoken “Sinister Science” to the cathartic exotica of the string-infused “Seven Veils”, we’re no closer to insight beyond simply identifying familiar components. And maybe that’s where some of the magic comes from really. It occurs while listening Ka-Spel crack a little while he partakes in cute rhyming games on plinky-plunky closer “Object” that the Tear Garden is almost an in-joke, an insular and obscure province charted by two long-time friends who found a creative unity many years ago and have never let it go. It’s their trip, but we still have the privilege of being guests, and that can’t help but still feel somewhat special.

Source: idieyoudie.com

Lyrics

1- STRANGE LAND

Tried the swirling mists of Avalon
The suburbs of Pompeii
Trod the Himalayan foothills
Stopped in Denver for a day
I sampled sweet Siberia ,
flew whales ’round Tampa Bay.
I Pitched my tent next to the Palace in
the Republic of No Way

And I’ve been One with the people
I walked on water and on clouds.
– not trying to impress you but
I just cannot cope with crowds…
I was touched by your concern…and I’d be thrilled to show you how..
Just be assured I’ve liked it here, I recommend the view…
If I had to do it all again…Id wear my better shoes
My friends are so accommodating .Even you

Know This World is full of Wonders
Under each and every stone
The Song of Sam
The Crack of Thunder
The alarm bell on your phone.
And I have dipped my feet in waters that would
chill your fragile bones..
But even though I’ve liked it here, …I Sense I’m out of place
So for my next trick I will show you to make some space..
I’ll slip inside this now,and count o 1338… Im away………(My way…..)

6- SINISTER SCIENCE

Has to be room temperature
We need to wear our masks.
No more than 15 droplets or there will be a blast.
Ripping through the complex.
Flying fingers, flying glass.
At last the virus will escape the test-tube…
But I promise you …you’ll feel nothing.

We’ll tell no-one….

Sure you knew the consequences…
We weighed up all the risks.
But orders are still orders,
Of course, it came too this.

There will always be a volunteer, a pawn, another test.
A tiptoe to the precipice that does’t have a fence.
And if you slip I promise we will cover up the mess.
I promise you ,you’ll feel nothing.
We’ll tell no-one

8- KISS DON’T TELL
The 3.30 shadow slips under the sofa,
The fat lady sings and the room comes alive..
And Sally is petrified, wants it all over but that’s how things are on an average night..
And a scream is sucked in and imploding inside her.
She’s shouting for help at the top of the stairs,
No sound will come out as they creep up behind her,
The music’s too loud down there

(We don’t hear you…)

So nobody comes as the night keeps on stretching..
Cos nobody’s listening for little girl’s dreams
Yet the monsters are real, and they’re stroking and flexing…and Sally
Will feed them until they retreat.
In the morning when outside the engines are purring, the neighbours are
Fighting, the radio blares.
She’ll retrace the terror that kept her from sleeping, and they will
Just smile and pretend that they care.

There There…..we don’t hear you
(I won’t FEAR you…)

11- SEVEN VEILS
She wished mankind could just be kinder
She’d take the bus , not look behind her.
She’d wear the clothes that made her tall.
Not hunched up in the shopping mall.
A prim white mask to block the fumes.
A mace for offers she’d refuse.
A pillow stuffed inside her blouse to reap respect
outside the house.
Though inside things were even worse with talk so tight she nearly burst.
Her lurid tales of lust and sleaze lost over lunch.
He’d not say “Please”.
Just took her when he felt the need,when he’d grown tired of that screen
Mechanical, on even days.He finished then he turned away.
She wished her man could just be kinder
and wished that she could simply
find the place where she belonged…

Don’t let them get to Seven , Batgirl
Set the dial to Four
They’ll all pretend they know you Batgirl but
will toss away the core.
You’re bigger, braver than you seem
And everyone wants more.
Don’t let them take it all now Batgirl…
Cherish what is yours.

12- OBJECT
Object . I’m an object you can squeeze with 2 strong hands. Object. Im an object you can trade in for a can of ice cold cola,hand me over to a geriatric groper….
Second prize in games of poker.
I’m yours to prod, to fondle, choke.Uhhhh….
Your Object .
Object. Im an object in your private Hall of Fame…
An object … how you treat me…….(?)
You should hang your head in shame.
Yet all the pain and all the blame’s on me.
No rights ,no personality. I’m here to creep.
I’m here to crawl.
Why don’t you hang me in your wall?
Your object.